In any business setting, incidents that are not part of the standard business practice may take place and cause interruption to the business operation. Such incidents can potentially reduce the quality of the services or products of the business, and sometimes may impose civil or even criminal liabilities on the business. For any given business, the particular types of incidents that are disruptive may depend on the nature of the business. For example, with respect to companies that manage large fleets of vehicles, such as in any field service applications, vehicle accidents can be very disruptive to the business operations.
Systems and processes have been implemented for reporting and managing vehicle accidents. For example, upon arrival at the scene of a vehicle accident, a police officer or other investigator usually fills out a paper accident report explaining in detail the accident scene. As part of this report, the police officer or other investigator may attempt to draw a sketch of the accident scene on a diagram of the road, which is to be submitted with the paper accident report. However, a drawback of these paper-based reports, which may be handwritten and may include hand sketches, is that the content thereof may be inconsistent, sloppy, illegible, inaccurate, and/or incomplete. As a result, vehicle accidents may be poorly documented.
Further, the detailed information relating to, for example, a vehicle accident is typically acquired by interrogating the drivers involved, collecting eyewitness testimony, by visual observation of the accident scene, and the like. Consequently, the information may be prone to inaccuracy and contradictions. Additionally, interpretations of this information may be very subjective and inconsistent from one police officer or other investigator to another. Therefore, a need exists for improved ways of collecting, compiling, and interpreting information with respect to, for example, reporting vehicle accidents.
Computer-based information systems are becoming cheaper, more rugged, and increasingly networked. As a result, technological advances are changing the way that information is collected, analyzed, and managed. For example, certain processes and certain types of equipment and instrumentation are becoming more automatic in nature, especially with regard to the capture and manipulation of data and the conversion of data into useful information. In one example, vehicle control systems (or vehicle information systems) are becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated. Generally, vehicle control systems may be any systems and/or subsystems that are installed in a vehicle or otherwise associated with the vehicle. Vehicle control systems may include, for example, brake systems, engine systems, electrical systems, steering and suspension systems, emission systems, transmission systems, sensor systems, informational systems and the like. Vehicle control systems may provide detailed information of vehicle operations in electronic form.